70. Compulsion Schooling: The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org

Compulsion Schooling 

The center of the scheme was Massachusetts, the closest thing to a theocracy to have 
emerged in America. The list below is a telling record of the long gap between the 
Massachusetts compulsory law of 1 852 and similar legislation adopted by the next set of 
states. Instructive also in the chronology is the place taken by the District of Columbia, 
the seat of federal government. 

Compulsory School Legislation 

1852 Massachusetts 1875 Maine 

1 865 District of Columbia New Jersey 

1 867 Vermont 1 876 Wyoming Territory 

1 87 1 New Hampshire 1 877 Ohio 



Washington Territory 1 879 Wisconsin 

1 872 Connecticut 1 883 Rhode Island 
New Mexico Territory Illinois 

1 873 Nevada Dakota Territory 

1 874 New York Montana Territory 
Kansas 

California 

Six other Western states and territories were added by 1890. Finally in 1918, sixty-six 
years after the Massachusetts force legislation, the forty-eighth state, Mississippi, enacted 
a compulsory school attendance law. Keep in mind Cubberley's words: everywhere there 
was "strenuous opposition." 

De-Moralizing School Procedure